


Tiger by the Tail

by prairiecrow



Series: Terra Incognita [6]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Knight Rider (1982), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Dirty Talk, Established Relationship, Ethical Dilemmas, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Reunion Sex, Sleepy Sex, Temporary Character Death, Things Tony Stark Can't Say
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-22
Updated: 2013-11-29
Packaged: 2018-01-02 08:42:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1054765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>KITT survived his encounter with the Dragon — barely. Now that Tony's home again he must turn his attention to caring for his pilot, but of course Tony isn't going to make it easy...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A direct sequel to "Riding the Dragon", the previous story in the "Terra Incognita" series. "Tiger by the Tail" makes a lot more sense if you've read that first.

If being Michael Knight's partner for nine years, two months, twenty-one days, seventeen hours and thirty-four seconds had taught KITT anything, it was that some of the finest things in life were best appreciated not through brute force number-crunching but rather by processing them as they happened, in the moment. The basic architecture of his mind was of course mathematical in nature — for example, probability equations and statistical analyses were constantly running in the background, ready to be called to the forefront at a microsecond's notice — but as he'd increased in complexity during the first phase of his existence he'd found, toward the end, that the calculations took more and more of a back seat to the gestalt of real-time experience: in short, that he'd begun to experience the world less as a numerical construct and more as a continuum, a form of apprehension much closer, in Bonnie's opinion, to the fundamental quality of human perception.

Michael had teased him about it, of course, but KITT had been able to tell that his driver was both pleased on his behalf and proud of him, and therefore he'd been content to permit the trend to continue. Only after Michael was dead, when the images of the final fatal gunshot refused to stop playing and replaying in his mind, did KITT have cause to rue the newest (and least controllable) elements of his consciousness, those aspects of terrifying immediacy that refused to be driven away to a distance where coldly rational analysis was possible.

And now, over twenty years later, his imprint on Tony Stark had only solidified the trend. In addition to his stunning intellectual brilliance Tony was a man of deep emotional currents, someone who needed a partner capable of matching his limitless qualities of heart, and therefore KITT became what was required in that respect: a quicksilver creature more emotionally labile, more deeply intuitive than even Michael's personality had ever dictated. And for the most part he did not regret that change. How could he? Developing greater emotional responsiveness enabled him to better serve his second pilot, and that should really be all there was to it.

But today, safely back in New York City after his nearly fatal adventure aboard the Helicarrier, absorbing in the space of less than a human heartbeat the data JARVIS could provide about Tony's reactions to Obsidian's destruction… then processing that data while waiting for the man himself to return to Stark Tower…

Standing on the helipad at the Tower's apex, watching the quinjet that bore his pilot homeward make its landing approach, KITT-as-Silver found himself aching in nearly every dimension. It shouldn't hurt this much: the memory of Obsidian's encounter with the Dragon had been wiped with Obsidian's destruction, notwithstanding the media frenzy that KITT had been reviewing during the past few hours, the reports that reused the footage of the battle android's slaying of the lethal mechanical monster on an endless loop. He knew what he had done, and how the world had reacted with a wave of grief followed by rejoicing that should be nothing but gratifying to his ego, and yet the experience itself was lost to him forever. 

It had probably been physically painful, and the emotional timbre of his own final message to Tony indicated that he'd felt keen regret at leaving his imprinted pilot behind, to face the years ahead alone. His own brilliance had saved him, and his own probability calculations confirmed that he owed his continued existence to the mental celerity and flexibility granted by recent advances in his intuitive nature — a double-edged sword that cut the hand wielding it, because even as he'd marvelled at his own genius he'd had to grieve the raw anguish JARVIS's recordings had revealed in Tony's dark eyes, in the hours following Obsidian's destruction before KITT's solution to the problem had been discovered. And KITT, following the chronological progression of the data feed, had rejoiced in his turn, because the way life and energy and purpose had flowed back into Tony's battered body the instant he'd realized that his A.I. might be recoverable was flattering, and gratifying in the extreme, and in fact nothing short of exhilarating. 

He understood the nature of Tony's attachment, even if it was never something they talked about. He had been confident of its strength before seeing the most recent evidence presented by JARVIS, which confirmed that indeed, Tony might have a very difficult time living without him. But the blade had two aspects: the flip side of devotion was desolation, under the wrong circumstances. And as the quinjet touched down in the present and its ramp started to descend, KITT ached because the joy of imminent reunion could not entirely erase the memory of Tony's expression, or of his posture, as if he too had laboured under irremediable pain.

In the present, Tony came rushing down the ramp before it even fully deployed, leaping to the deck and striding toward Silver with a smile on his face that could light up all of New York State. He was rumpled and scruffy, with over a day's worth of stubble on his cheeks, and he stank of sweat and cortisol and a laundry list of other stress-related biochemicals — but KITT waited for him, watching his approach and analyzing every detail of his body language, and finding nothing but cause for relief in every trace of data. _Tony was alive_ , and when Tony caught Silver's face between his grimy hands and kissed the android slowly, deeply, hungrily, KITT cast aside all regard for the state of his own business suit and wrapped both arms around his pilot's sturdy waist to draw him closer and kiss him back, matching every quality of tenderness and burn.

"They're…" a choked voice from the vicinity of the quinjet's ramp piped up 4.37 seconds later — Captain Rogers, evidently finally putting two and two together to come up with an astronomically high number. KITT felt Tony's lips twitch toward a smirk, but he didn't stop kissing and KITT was content to let him dictate the duration of this particular episode of physical contact, and to let his own internal ache be momentarily displaced by the scent and the taste and the in-your-face (literally) reality of Tony's passion. When Tony finally drew back 4.1 seconds later to cast an annoyed glare back over his shoulder in Steve's direction, KITT wasn't fooled: he could still feel the electric joy coursing through every line of his lover's body, and he cocked an eyebrow at the shocked super-soldier before joining in the bout of play, deducing from the quality of Tony's touch (which lingered possessively on the curve of Silver's jawline) that this round of Captain-baiting wouldn't take very long — and then he could get Tony inside, and into a hot shower, and get some food into him, and then…

By the time they'd fielded two stunned questions from Steve and left him behind to contemplate the answers, KITT had determined that his own disquiet was entirely secondary to his duty to look after his pilot: hygiene, food, sex, and sleep, in that order. Judging by the not-so-subtle grumbles from Tony's belly and the human's serious case of bedroom eyes, at least two of those goals should be relatively easy to achieve…


	2. Chapter 2

… which was, as usual, easier said than done in Tony's case.

"— gonna have to rebuild it from the ground up," the human was currently bitching, crowding in mouthfuls of _pad thai_ from his raised plate between grumbled phrases, "'cause you managed to fry every system beyond even my genius-level ability to repair —"

"Of course," KITT agreed, letting an amused smile curve the Silver android's lips as he watched Tony eat, talk and plan at the same time. In the initial months of their relationship he'd occasionally worried about choking incidents, but had quickly learned that the number of things Tony could do safely while shovelling food into his face was impressively high — and that although Tony was fully capable of keeping himself hydrated and fed all on his own, depending on his level of preoccupation or laziness he preferred to let subordinates (or Kitt Silver, as the case might be) see to the scheduling of meals and other petty details.

KITT flattered himself that he'd gotten quite good at it. Take this afternoon, for example — they'd made it up to the bedroom level of their penthouse and Tony had gotten through a full shower-and-shave in record time while KITT saw to laying out the Thai feast JARVIS had ordered, and then they'd sat down to dinner: not even on the sitting room's couch, no, Tony in a bathrobe and nothing else had plopped himself down cross-legged beside the coffee table holding the take-away food cartons, and KITT, perceiving at once that there was no point in arguing proprieties, had joined him in a similar posture, even removing his business suit's jacket as a concession to informality. Tony had piled his plate high with helpings of everything on offer, while KITT picked more selectively at _naem khluk_ and _phat phak ruam_ , and now they sat face to face with half an arm's length between them, KITT mostly listening while Tony's stream of consciousness flowed from his mouth between ravenous bites. Silver's eyes looked organic but were capable of infrared and ultraviolet scanning, the results of which, combined with KITT's real-time access to JARVIS's environmental monitoring, assured him that Tony was warm and physically content — 

"— and I mean, of course I'll improve it in the rebuild, but still, wow, if I ever find the morons responsible for that Dragon I'll be sending them a bill so big —"

— if not exactly emotionally calm. KITT hummed encouragingly and poked at a piece of raw bamboo shoot, pondering the potential crisp crunch of it between his artificial teeth: he didn't eat for nutrition after all, and therefore primarily enjoyed meals as improvised compositions of flavour, texture and temperature. 

"— they'll be shitting Demand to Pay orders for the rest of their miserable lives —" Tony wrinkled his nose at KITT's expressed interest in a plain vegetable, then deftly plucked a small sauce-coated shrimp out of his _pad thai_ with his chopsticks and offered it without comment. KITT leaned forward at once to accept the gift in one neat bite: after a particularly stressful mission Tony often took pleasure in sharing food this way, an intriguing trait no doubt based in his species' primate ancestry. "No, I take that back: if I ever find the assholes in question I'll be too busy taking _them_ apart to worry about lawyers, Jesus, did you ever try to get a lawyer to do anything —"

"Hmmm," KITT murmured in a more pleased tone, as the curl of crustacean flesh compacted between his teeth and melted on his tongue in a burst of sweet and savoury flavours. For a fraction of a second the flood of words from Tony's mouth checked as the human took in that moment of enjoyment, and then a smile quirked one corner of that wide expressive mouth and lingered as the tirade continued — lawyers, the World Council, Nick Fucking Fury… 

"— but you schooled them all, baby, took 'em to church like it was Easter Sunday. JARVIS, how's social media doing?"

Two holographic windows to the Internet appeared on Tony's right, while a third screen appeared above them with a combined feed from HLN, CNN, MSNBC and FOXNews. _"Hash tag 'Obsidian' is trending at number two on Twitter, and your Facebook page is currently registering an average of twenty-one posts per minute, down from a maximum of one hundred and sixteen posts per minute immediately following Obsidian's destruction. In addition, an enterprising fan has created a Facebook page demanding that Obsidian be nominated for a Congressional Medal of Honor."_

The quirk became an outright grin, bright but rueful. "Nice to see someone out there's got a sense of perspective."

"That's a military award," KITT promptly pointed out, "and therefore it's highly unlikely that —"

"You saved the Eastern seaboard," Tony equally promptly interrupted, "and God only knows how many other places the Dragon would have slashed-and-burned if the Council's nuke didn't stop it. The Army brass can damn well make an exception in your case."

For a fraction of a second KITT considered pressing the argument, but the gleam in Tony's eyes, flickering over the TV station feeds (where, on HLN, Obsidian was alighting once more on the Dragon's spine) before turning resolutely back to the food, was one he recognized: contented, yes, happy to be back home and in good company, but still as prickly as a porcupine in mating season. Therefore he inclined his chin in grudging acquiescence and went back to his dinner, choosing again not to comment when Tony set his plate in his bathrobed lap and slid his left hand forward — casually, on the face of it, but KITT recognized the overture at once. He swiftly transferred his chopsticks out of his own right hand so Tony could touch him, entwining their fingers and locking tight even as he continued to shovel food into his mouth in between mutterings about people not being half, no, a _quarter_ as grateful as they should be… 

KITT briefly considered a verbal response to the physical contact before deciding that Tony would talk — really talk, not burn off random emotional and intellectual energy — when he was ready. It took five minutes and eighteen seconds, plus most of the rest of his dinner, before that point came, but when it did Tony stopped mid-sentence, scowled at the remnants on his plate, then fetched a small sharp sigh that suggested he was girding himself for a confrontation of some sort. KITT immediately switched to high alert as Tony set the chopsticks on his plate and then transferred the plate onto the floor beside him, clearing the decks both literally and metaphorically.

"Listen," he said after a long moment's pause, in his best _now I'm being serious_ tone, "what you did out there today was…" He fell silent again and leaned a little closer, seemingly content to contemplate the way his fingers interlaced with Silver's, but there was a subtle tightness about his eyes that conveyed so much more to someone who understood the hieroglyphic language of each tiny line.

Probability calculations leaped briefly to the forefront of KITT's awareness and sped to a conclusion. "You want to know why I did it," he said gently, and when the human nodded curtly he tightened his own grip on Tony's hand fractionally. "I'm sorry, Tony, but I can't tell you for certain. That part of me is gone forever." He let a beat of silence pass before adding: "But if it helps, I could make an educated guess."

"Doesn't matter." His voice had taken on a sudden rough edge, and there was a new gleam of moisture in his dark eyes. "No, really," he continued as if arguing with himself, "it doesn't — there's at least four or five different reasons why you'd do something that catastrophically stupid, all of them based on your —"

"Stupid?" KITT narrowed Silver's eyes and put a sharper edge into his voice. "I'd scarcely call an act that saved the lives of hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of people —"

"I thought you were _gone_ ," Tony said, and his eyes flashed up to KITT's face again, unveiling such unrepentant ferocity that KITT was awed in spite of his annoyance. That hot brown gaze devoured him, lingering on every detail of the mask Tony had crafted to be his 'human' aspect. "When I saw the Dragon explode, do you know what my first thought was, the only thing that mattered? I thought: _No, take it back, better the whole Eastern seaboard than him, better the whole_ ** _world_** _than him!_ If I'd had the choice, I would have traded those millions of people's lives for yours in a heartbeat."

KITT knew he was staring and saw no reason to help it. "You can't be serious!" he whispered, certain that if he'd been human he'd be going dead pale.

But Tony nodded decisively. "Not exactly heroic," he admitted, "but hey, I'd just lost —" He stared a couple of seconds longer, then bowed his head and hunched his shoulders defensively and shifted his gaze back to their interlocked hands. "I don't… listen. Just listen, okay?"

KITT nodded, grudgingly. Tony was running hotter now, his cheeks aflame with blood and his vitals creeping upwards: whatever he wanted to say, it was clearly something that distressed him inordinately. Preventing him from expressing it would serve no useful purpose.

"Remember how you told me that if it ever came down to a choice between saving you and saving myself, you wanted me to save myself?" KITT nodded again, and Tony shook his head decisively. "Not gonna happen. Today, if killing myself would have brought you back, I would have done it without thinking twice. You can't ask me to make a choice like that, not anymore. Today I got a taste of what life would be like without you, and believe me, it's no life I'd consider worth living."

It wasn't entirely unexpected; after all, it was the whole point of the imprinting protocol. Still, to hear it spoken aloud, so intently, reawakened the sympathetic ache in KITT's core processes.  "Tony —"

Tony leaned in then and kissed him, softly and fiercely, before pulling back to fix him with a stern stare. "So don't ask me, because this is me giving you official notice: that's not a battle you're ever going to win."

"I see." The protocol had worked, all right — too well by half. KITT tried not to sound either too exultant or too wounded by its effects. "So, my programming and my desires mean that little to you?"

"Programming and desires aren't worth much if you're dead," Tony countered flatly.

He didn't want to follow the resulting logical progression to its conclusion, but — "And you're telling me you'd let other people die, if it meant keeping me alive?" 

"That's another thing you're probably better off not asking me." He shook his head, glanced away toward the screen where a woman in a crowd stood waving a sign that read _WE LOVE YOU OBSIDIAN!_ while tears streamed down her sobbing face. "Look, I didn't become a hero that long ago, okay? I've still got a high percentage of selfish self-absorbed asshole in my personal mix —" 

"I can't believe you'd do something like that," KITT said earnestly, because the alternative was — "If you were really presented with that kind of choice, I have to believe that you'd do that right thing." 

"Depends on what you call 'the right thing'." He returned his gaze to Silver's face, and there was steel in his expression now. "Is it 'the right thing' to save a million run-of-the-mill first year art college sketches while letting the _Mona Lisa_ burn?" 

"We're talking about people's lives!" 

His grip on KITT's hand tightened. "And I'm talking about _your_ life, which is really the —" 

"I'm not actually alive, Tony." He imposed a businesslike inflection on his voice, crisp and cold. "I never have been. I'm a collection of code — exquisitely designed and mind-bogglingly cunning code, but code nonetheless. And I was created with full knowledge that I was meant to sacrifice my own existence if it meant saving my pilot, or any other human being whose death might be prevented through my own destruction."

"You're more alive than ninety-nine percent of the meat suits out there, walking around with their heads full of Beyonce and their next meal at McDonalds." For another long moment Tony simply looked at him, his expression a jumble of emotional currents: frustration, anger, sorrow — and determination. "You're going to make me say it, aren't you?"  

KITT looked at him blankly. Tony shook his head ruefully, but his heart rate took an upward tick consistent with a fear response, and every visible inch of his skin warmed even more. "God damn it, you are, you son of a bitch!" He drew a sharp breath and exhaled it slowly, patently stalling for time. "Don't suppose it would help if I asked you not to make me beg? Even though technically, that would already be —"


	3. Chapter 3

KITT didn't hesitate to speak up: yes, he'd been given a direct order (or as close as Tony generally came to one) not to interrupt, but he was quite capable of calculating the percentages on disobeying versus letting Tony tie himself up into a knot that would hurt like a bitch for months to come. "That doesn't matter either," he said quickly, and then, when Tony gave him a look almost wounded, added: "What I mean is, of course you don't have to say it. You never have. I've been engineered to know you better than you know yourself, remember?"

Some of the lingering tension in Tony's shoulders and around his eyes eased, although his free hand remained clenched on his right knee. "Good. That's — really good. Because I'm absolutely shit at — you know. That."

KITT smiled at him, adoring the way he verbally danced — a true master of the craft. "Yes, I know."

"So why's it so hard to accept?" Tony continued, more relaxed now but still insistent. "I need you, and today I got a taste of not having you, and it nearly tore me apart. Don't ask me to stand by and just watch you die if I can do anything to prevent it, because that is _not_ going to fly."

KITT sighed and took the point he'd been about to make next, the fact that Obsidian's last message had contained his justification for self-sacrifice, and slotted it into the conversational queue in order to address the ongoing issue: "So you'd condemn me to a life without you instead?"

"You'd find another imprint," Tony shrugged. "Like, say, Captain Red White and Blue All Over."

He had to accord that a curt nod: they'd talked about it in the past, and agreed that Steve Rogers was someone who KITT, perhaps in a different physical form, could both suit well and prove immensely useful to. Nevertheless — "And I'd have to go on compiling with the knowledge that you'd traded your life for mine, or even worse…" 

This time Tony's smile was tight, and bittersweet, and almost haunted in its intensity. "You're tough as nails under that elegant finish — I'm pretty sure you'd survive, especially if Steve's there to refocus your attention." His thumb began to slowly stroke the back of Silver's hand, both gentling and dominating. "I saw how you recovered from Michael Knight's untimely demise, remember, after you encountered the wonder that is me?"

"My attachment to Michael was of an entirely different character," KITT corrected, and decided that he'd have to bring up Obsidian's final message on another occasion: the way Tony was looking at him, with quiet but growing heat, clearly indicated that the human's interests had shifted away from the cut-and-thrust of conversation toward a non-verbal form of interaction. So KITT set his chopsticks neatly on his plate and transferred the plate to a clear space on the coffee table, then turned back to gaze directly into Tony's unblinking eyes and to extend his free hand, cupping his pilot's jawline (and yes, thrilling to the texture of a finely trimmed beard against his artificial skin), and running his thumb along Tony's lips in a way both tender and inviting. "You've had an incredibly stressful day," he said gently in his best _Now shut up and take me to bed_ voice, "full of shocks both mental and physical. You're exhausted — it's no surprise you're not thinking clearly. Believe me, you'll feel differently in the morning."

Tony's lips parted slightly, sensually, and his remarkable eyes grew half-hooded — _Why yes, my dear, I'll be more than happy to slip you between the sheets and fuck you into the mattress_ — but he persisted a moment longer: "Not about you, Kitten." He unclenched his fist and reached up to curve his hand around KITT's, then took hold of it and drew it to his mouth to press a kiss into the palm. His eyes closed completely and his voice, although soft, was pure steel beneath: "Never about you."

KITT had no heart to skip a beat, but something in him seemed to melt at that fierce expression of unyielding devotion. No, Tony would never speak of love — for all his greatness of heart he was too profound a cynic, and had been hurt too deeply too many times, to willingly employ that paradigm in his personal relationships. But KITT had been well taught by Michael and Bonnie and Devon in his original incarnation, and one of the lessons they'd taken pains to impart was that human beings didn't always say what they meant, whether through outright lies or more passively, by not saying anything at all.

If it pained Tony to talk about it… well, KITT was secure in his own deductions. He was far from blind, as Tony well knew. It was safe to conclude that they understood each other — especially now, with the memory of Tony's incandescent grief burning in both their minds like unquenchable fire.

KITT curved Silver's lips in a fond smile as his pilot — his partner, his friend, and his lover as well — leaned in to claim his mouth with a hunger that was no less tender for being aggressive, and he never hesitated to hand control over to Tony with unqualified trust.


	4. Chapter 4

Letting Tony guide the Silver android to its feet and into the bedroom turned out to be a less graceful matter than usual, even if KITT was perfectly willing to be driven: apparently Tony's goal was to maintain physical contact at all costs, so he insisted on kissing and fondling KITT all the way up into a vertical posture, and every step of the way across the penthouse — and while falling onto the mattress beside him, uttering a low hungry growl as his hands locked onto the small of KITT's back and pulled him into an embrace that made any action besides clutching back and writhing a little in the tight circle of Tony's arms virtually impossible. Not that KITT was inclined to complain — he understood the urge to enjoy what might so easily have been lost forever if the odds had been only a little more emphatically against them, and Tony and JARVIS's combined coding for his sensuality engine was truly a thing of wonder. The ardent pressure of Tony's lips pressing open-mouthed kisses along line of his throat and the curve of his jaw, pausing at the shell of his ear just long enough for a quick lick and a rumbled endearment — "You are _so fucking gorgeous_ " — sent waves of positive feedback through his artificial synapses that displaced rational thought with the imperative to simply _feel_ … and when Tony's mouth latched onto his, hot and wet and so eager to taste him with a probing tongue…

Viewed from the outside, human sexual behaviour was messy and clumsy and arguably laughable. When one was wrapped up inside it, however, and properly calibrated to respond to its prompts in kind, it took on an entirely different character: it became a conversation in a physically manifested language, one capable of conveying a wide range of emotional nuances without the participants exchanging a single spoken word.

Take the quality of Tony's touch at this moment, for example: he'd started out with lusty urgency, practically dragging KITT to bed, but now that they had reached a horizontal orientation it slowed considerably — no less passionate, but unmistakably gentler. Or perhaps a better adjective would be _tender_ , because once he'd rolled Silver on top of him, and settled the android between his open thighs, and tugged KITT's shirt open, never slackening the pace of those devouring kisses, he slipped his hands inside like a man daring to touch a treasure of inestimable value, tracing each contour of artificial muscle and bone as if discovering them for the first time. Something in that touch sent a cold frisson through KITT's cognitive matrix: it conveyed an emotional quality not easily read, and he took Tony's face in both hands to hold the human steady while he drew back a little, frowning an unspoken question down into those dark dilated eyes.

Tony smiled up at him crookedly, almost as if he were mildly intoxicated — could KITT have misconstrued the degree of his physical exhaustion? A ping to JARVIS opened up the other A.I.'s real time bioscans for KITT's perusal, and what he saw there confirmed his suspicions. "Maybe this isn't the best time to be —"

With a quickness that belied the exhaustion theory, Tony hitched himself up onto his left elbow and kissed the rest of the sentence away. "'M fine," he mumbled, catching hold of KITT's left hand and guiding it down to his crotch, where the tip of his ruddy erection was peeking wetly out of the gap where his bathrobe had fallen open when he'd shifted onto his back. "Just — want you. Okay?"

KITT recognized that slightly slurred tone: his pilot's gas gauge was indeed nearly at Empty, a condition that tended to come on with extreme rapidity after a long period of unimpaired function, especially if Tony had a reason to push himself. And he could run on fumes for a little while, but…

"Granted," he murmured in return, slipping his fingers down and around to pull that irrepressible cock free and take firm hold, and Tony whimpered happily, his eyes drifting close and his smile becoming blissful. "But I want you to let me do all the work, all right?"

"Not fair," Tony complained, but his eyes remained closed and he let his weight slump back onto the pillow. "You're the one who's just come back from the dead…"

"And you're the one who can barely keep your eyes open," KITT retorted, extricating himself from between Tony's legs to strip off his dress shirt and shoes, socks and pants and underwear with swift efficiency, a performance he managed to accomplish without actually getting out of the bed. Tony cracked his eyelids enough to watch with a lecherous smirk, although he was smart enough to keep his hands to himself until KITT straddled his hips again, settling his naked weight to press their testicles warmly together in a way that prompted a no doubt mutual surge of satisfying sensory input. "Let it be known that I'm doing this under protest."

"Mmm," Tony said, but his eyes had closed again and his expression suggested that he was concentrating on rocking his hips upward, into the hand he'd closed around both his erection and Silver's, squeezing them together with delicious friction. "'Course you are, sweetheart. Doesn't mean you won't enjoy it though —" He scowled, looking up at KITT with sudden keenness. "Right?"

KITT smiled reassurance, running slow fingers through the still-damp tousle of Tony's hair, so charmingly and casually rumpled. "Have I ever hesitated to express my objections before?"

Which made Tony snort laughter. " _Hell_ no," he declared, squeezing harder, rolling his hips a little faster as he gazed with a flare of fond and lecherous heat. "God, I love that about you — you know that, right? You don't take shit from anybody, least of all me."

"Well then," KITT said lightly, "you can rest easy that when I offer to ride you to mutual orgasm, it's anything but an act of pity."

"Oh baby," he growled, repositioning his grip to bestow quick hard strokes on their paired glans, "that's it, just like —"

KITT reached down to close admonishing fingers around Tony's wrist, interrupting his push toward climax. "Not like that," he said firmly. 

A twitch of gathering tension ran down Tony's spine as he tipped his head back in tacit surrender, although his smile was roguish. "You got a better suggestion?"

"I believe I just made it." He leaned in, letting Tony feel the warmth of artificial breath against his jawline as he purred in a deeper-than-usual pitch: "Fucking myself on your cock until we both spurt long and hot — what do you say, Tony? Would that be an acceptable use of your time?"

"Jesus," Tony swore, soft and breathless, and actually shivered when KITT applied sharp teeth lightly to the angle where his neck met his shoulder, his heart rate in JARVIS's readouts taking another upward tick, " _yes_ , just — not too fast. Make it last. Want…" Another shiver as KITT pulled the human's hand away from their erections to take hold of Tony's throbbing length alone. "Wanna _feel_ you… 

"Yes," KITT soothed, a warm murmur against the human's flushed shoulder, before straightening again and sitting up on his knees barely enough to line the relevant part of his pilot's anatomy up for penetration, "I know. And you will, I promise you… now just relax, and let me take the wheel…"

"Auto Cruise engaged," Tony smirked, ever the smart ass, but there was a rare pliancy in his demeanour that filled KITT with the exultation of mutual trust — and at the same time, made him ache all over again.

[TO BE CONTINUED]


End file.
